The first Lifehacker post hit the tubes four years ago today. Since then, we've published thousands of tips, tricks, guides, and tools to streamline your life. Here's a brief history of Lifehacker, 2005 to 2009.

Below, we've taken a look back at all of our posts from 2005 to present and pulled out the five most popular posts of each year. Not all of them remain entirely relevant today, but they provide a nice overview of where we've been in the past, and hopefully may even introduce you to some older Lifehacker content that only our most dedicated readers may recognize. Let's get started. Photo by BohPhoto.

Five Most Popular Posts of 2005

Advertisement

A Brief LHistory of 2005: In the early days of 2005, our legendary editor emeritus Gina Trapani first opened the Lifehacker floodgates, unleashing onto unsuspecting readers a bountiful array of tips and tricks the likes of which the world had never seen. By fall of '05, Lifehacker brought on its second and third editors. By November of '05, yours truly joined the Lifehacker fold. By the end of the year, Lifehacker had been quoted by the New York Times, named one of Time magazine's 50 Coolest Web Sites of 2005, and landed on oh-so-many more lists. It was a year of considerable growing pains, a whole lot of imageless text, and some considerably cool hacks, including the following five most popular posts of 2005:

1. How to Copy Songs from Your iPod to Your PC

The iPod has always been a popular item at Lifehacker, especially considering how many restrictions Apple places on your ability to actually use the thing in perfectly reasonable ways. That's why it's no surprise that the most popular post from our first year of existence is our guide to copying songs from your iPod to your PC.

One of the little-known freebies Gmail offers is a portable SMTP server to send mail from any…
Read more Read more

3. How to Set Up a Personal Home Web Server

In its earliest days, Lifehacker was primarily a compendium of very short tips and tricks, without much long-form content. In September of 2005, Gina wrote a fantastic, step-by-step guide detailing how to set up a personal home web server—and thus, the Lifehacker feature was born. Since then, we've published countless in-depth guides features, but this web server feature continues to be one of my favorites.

Of all the great DIY projects at this year's Maker Faire, the one project that really caught…
Read more Read more

2. How to Format Your Hard Drive and Install Windows XP from Scratch

After battling blue screens of death and bloated software installs you just can't seem to clean up, sometimes there's not much you can do but format your drive and install Windows from scratch. We showed you how, and clearly you appreciated the favor.

Hey, Windows XP users: The blue screen of death got you down? Missing dll errors making you frown?…
Read more Read more

3. How to Dual-Boot Windows XP and Windows Vista

Love it or lump it, when Windows Vista beta hit the tubes in June of '06 we couldn't wait to try it out. Still, we weren't quite ready to ditch our old installation of XP, so our guide to dual booting XP and Vista showed you how to dip your toe in Vista without leaving the comfort of XP. Believe it or not, it's the same basic process as dual booting Windows 7 with XP or Vista.

Update, March 30, 2007: This article was published in June of 2006 when a beta version of Windows…
Read more Read more

4. Make a Ringtone from Any MP3

You may not believe it today, what with all your fancy tools and web sites that make ringtone creation a breeze, but there was a time when getting a new ringtone on your phone without paying for it was kind of a chore. Our guide to making a ringtone from any MP3 walks through editing an MP3 and getting it to your phone in a few easy steps that still hold up today.

5. Top 10 Ubuntu Apps and Tweaks

Ubuntu's first release may have been way back in 2004, but the open-source Linux distribution made a splash in a big way in 2006, prompting us to dig in and write up our ten favorite Ubuntu apps and tweaks. Many of them still hold up today, but our much more recent list of the top 10 Ubuntu applications definitely offers a fresher look at what Ubuntu has to offer.

Five Most Popular Posts of 2007

A Brief LHistory of 2007: The productivity-powered Lifehacker engine continued hitting on all pistons in '07, with shoutouts from Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, PC World, and other prestigious names in the biz. We also secured our first Bloggie for Best Group Weblog. Apart from all the attention, we were changing things on the site, too. We started our Lifehacker Code project, in which Gina and I released a handful of Firefox extensions and Windows applications into the open-source world. On the masthead, we said goodbye to old friends, hello and goodbye to Kyle Pott and—that's right—we brought in our current senior editor, Kevin Purdy.

Update: This post is no longer maintained. For the most up-to-date Hackintosh build, see our always …
Read more Read more

2. Better Gmail 2 Firefox Extension for New Gmail

You know that crazy Lifehacker Code project we started in 2006? Well, Gina's Better Gmail 2 Firefox extension was far and away the most popular creation of the bunch, supercharging your Gmail inbox with custom tweaks and features.

3. Jailbreak Your iPhone or iPod Touch with One Click

Back in the early days of the iPhone and iPod touch, jailbreaking was the only way you could get third party apps running on your device. Things changed when iPhone 2.0 hit the streets, but the jailbreaking scene is still as alive as ever, and we're still showing you how to jailbreak your iPhones.

UPDATE: This guide is out of date. See our always up-to-date guide to jailbreaking your iPhone,…
Read more Read more

4. Burn Almost Any Video File to a Playable DVD

It's never been all that easy to burn just any old video to a DVD unless you were willing to shell out a little cash for a shareware app. When we showed you how to burn almost any video file to a playable DVD, we stepped through putting those hours of AVIs onto DVDs with a free, open-source app called DVD Flick.

Five Most Popular Posts of 2008

A Brief LHistory of 2008: Hopefully '08 isn't a distant memory to anyone yet. The second edition of the Lifehacker book, Upgrade Your Life, hit shelves; Lifehacker won it's second bloggie for Best Computer or Technology Weblog; and we continued to get mentions across the cultural landscape at places like TIME, PC World, The Wall Street Journal, and a few other familiar places. We made a splash on CNBC in about 45 seconds of Holiday GTD, and expanded and contracted to the tune of the recession—namely, our bench added intern-turned-editor, Jason Fitzpatrick.

Update July 14, 2008: Got a new iPhone 3G or upgraded your device to the iPhone 2.0 software? Here…
Read more Read more

3. Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks

Despite all the developments on the web in the past four years, at the end of the day we all still end up back at the Google search box. Our top 10 obscure Google search tricks introduced you to the Google-fu you need to create laser-precise search terms for your daily queries.

Since the dawn of time, geeks have been playing harmless pranks on their beloved (but unsuspecting) …
Read more Read more

5. Turn Your iPod Touch into an iPhone

The iPhone's great, but if you don't feel like shelling out the monthly fee to Apple, we showed you how to turn your iPod touch into an iPhone using a jailbroken iPhone, a custom mic, and an iPhone app called SIP-VoIP.

UPDATE (10/18/2010): For an updated and much better version, check out how to turn your iPod touch…
Read more Read more

What's to Come in 2009?

We've already seen some serious change in 2009, most notably the transition of Gina from editor to weekly contributor (you can expect to hear more from her starting next week). I'm tasked with attempting to fill Gina's shoes, Kevin Purdy is already doing a standup job at Senior Editor, Jason Fitzpatrick is coming into his own on the weekend and with more weekday posting, and the How-To Geek has joined us as a contributing editor to round of Team Lifehacker 2009. We're stronger than we've ever been, have all kinds of plans for improving, and hope to make 2009 the best year of Lifehacker yet.